Black Angel
by Maura Manette
Summary: Three years after Sherlock's fall, John takes one of his own... *Trigger warning **first time writing poetry in 2 years warning :P


_"Come here, oh my star is fading__  
__And I swerve out of control__  
__And I swear I waited and waited__  
__I've got to get out of this hole___

_But time is on your side__  
__It's on your side now__  
__Not pushing you down and all around__  
__It's no cause for concern___

_Come on, oh my star is fading__  
__And I see no chance of release__  
__And I know I'm dead on the surface__  
__But I am screaming underneath_

_..._

_Stuck on the end of this ball and chain__  
__And I'm on my way back down again__  
__Stood on a bridge, tied to the noose__  
__Sick to the stomach__  
__You can say what you mean__  
__But it won't change a thing__  
__I'm sick of the secrets__  
__Stood on the edge, tied to the noose___

_You came along and you cut me loose"_

_- Amsterdam, by Coldplay_

The hourglass had been violently spun

The sand was thrown wildly, carelessly,

The time tracked within now had neither depth nor meter

Time heals,

But if time is lost,

The sands becoming an ominous storm in an ever-spinning glass,

The recovery has no effect on the wounded,

It has no effect on the sand, unable to force gravity on it, force it to track time

The healing to only those who can be healed

Those who are affected by time

A half is never complete without its match

A half cannot be healed

Man can bear only so much pain

And each man his own limits

But rarely does life's misery pile so heavily on a man that he reaches his limit

But some do.

Some bear agony,

Suffering,

Defeat

He tries to fight through it

But in the dark storm of absent time

The constant pounding wind of tragedy will knock down the strongest man in its path.

The man is built a fighter

He is not muscular

He is not tall

He is not young and feisty

He is short,

Stocky,

His hair barely touched with grey

His face expressively lined with patience and blissful simplicity

All this a thin layer

Masking his true bravery and endurance

Masking his true soldier

The time around him slowly moved

He watched it from the endless depths of his own capsule within the glass,

Forever trapped in the moment of another man's death

The final, fatal blow to an already wounded comrade

Three years within the glass

Muffled voices, blurred faces appearing on occasion

Emerging from the grey sea of fog, swirling past on time's current

They tried to help, tried to breathe life back into him

But the glass was always between them,

Blocking all sound

He was a fighter

He threw himself violently at the barrier

Desperately trying to hear the muffled sounds of soothing voices

To cling to the calming advice of friend or stranger

But with each attempt at escaping the limbo in which he was trapped,

Dark sand filled the cavities of his body,

Choking him

Drowning him

Forcing him to face defeat over and over again

A half cannot be healed, ever

The awareness of the exact emptiness and volume of the empty space left can be reduced

But only with time

Without time, there is naught but an ever-bleeding wound

The fighter lost a half

The memory of a falling body forever seared in his mind

The other half had not jumped

It had not leapt

It had fallen,

A fall from grace and power

A fall from its grasp on reality

The reality of its own awareness of its other half

The one it would be leaving behind

There is no blame that can be put on the fallen half

It lost its grasp on its own importance to the whole

Lost touch on the balance it had created in its other's life

Never aware of the depth of its other's depression before they encountered one another

Before the final blow, even then the other half's eyes linger for too long

On its gun

Even the day they first were introduced, in the process of removing his laptop from his drawer,

His eyes rested on the gun for far too long

Always a fighter

Always staring the enemy in the eyes

But when the enemy is everywhere around you,

How can you track it's every movement?

It was not a sudden decision

It was the fault of an escalation of lethargy

It was

Another defeat, following

Another attempt

To break free

He wept helplessly

His sides quivered for the first time in the three years which moved past his enclosure

The pain

The absolute agony

The depth, stretching far beyond his body

The constant consciousness of that empty volume

The emptiness

The silence raging within his mind, white static covering any hope he could muster

The echo of the pain, his heart the very epicenter, resonating throughout and past his empty insides

His heart hung in his barren ribs, absolutely frozen in frigid misery,

Turning pallid and deathly colored with sadness

The equivalent of three years later

He accepted there would be no escape.

The ever-spinning hourglass encasing him

With raging, stinging sands

Continued its battle against its helpless captive

Shuddering against his own cold tears,

He found himself with a rope in hand

Of course, he had gotten it

When or where it came from, he didn't know

He always had it nearby

He was always ready

Wrapping

Pulling

A necklace of rope

A leash to the rafters

He wanted to fall

Fall

From grace

From reality

From his grasp on the balance of life

Fall from his empty body

His tormented soul

Fall into nothing

On the edge of a rooftop

On the edge of a table, moved for convenience

On the edge of release

His eyes closed, sealing and protecting his flooded eyes from the still-blowing sands

His heels still remained to the edge of the ledge,

Inches from escape

He let himself feel the unbearable throb of his heart

Just for a moment

His feet were freed from supporting his body

The necklace tightened around his neck, pulling against his weight

His eyes flew back open

His throat closed from the drowning sands

Horrible

Blissful

Spots of black, burning holes through his vision

Holes through reality

He was suddenly light

He was not free

A black angel supported his feet from below

Grey eyes of hope shattered the glass,

Pulling him back to life.


End file.
